Alphas Rise: Immortal Brotherhood (Edge Book 1) Read online

  “Seduction isn’t always physical,” Reveca said easing back. “I’m heading out.”

  “Where?” Talon said as he drew his brow together.

  “Jamison.”

  Talon nearly growled. “He can wait.” His stare glided down her. “May be best for you to have more energy before you face him,” he said with a sinful smile dangling on his lips.

  That burn was back in her energy. She could have sworn the room dropped a degree or two. She could literally feel King’s stare boring into her.

  “I can handle Jamison just fine.” She lifted her chin as she stepped out of his arms. “Besides, I wouldn’t want to stall the conversation between you and King.” Reveca moved her gray eyes to King. “Seems he’s well versed on the Veil. Maybe he can tell you all about the people in there that would rather have the gift you have.”

  Reveca smirked as she looked back to Talon. “Maybe he can tell you that the Veil is overpopulated, busting at its seams. That it’s rumored the Reaper is sound asleep or trapped in some way. That some believe the only reason I was able to create the Edge in the first place was because of how stalled the process in the Veil is. Then he can move on to tell you that some fear that one day, because no souls can move on, that the dead and living will walk side by side, and when they do this world will collapse much the way my home dimension did.” She sneered. “He can school you on the Lords of Death, how they entrap souls that died basked in one negative emotion and feed off it. I would think that any one of those conversations would make any soul, no matter how old they are, appreciate their status in immortality.”

  Talon glanced to King, grinned, even winked. “I told you, this one right here cannot be tamed.”

  “Was that discussion before or after your disrespect for your gift came into view?”

  Talon’s eyes met Reveca’s once more. “King was telling me this fire in my blood—the phoenix— digs the Veil. He’s thinking I need to understand my power more.”

  Talon bit his lip, let his dark eyes reflect an apology that only Reveca could read. “I disagreed until I saw how ignited teaching made you. I’m going to require private lessons.”

  She smiled even though she didn’t want to. “I’m out.”

  “We’re set to go tonight,” Talon called after her. She nodded once. She was eager for the boys to get those girls that were trapped, eager for any information that would help her put all that hell with Black to bed.

  She made her way to her bike in the lot. Rolled her eyes as she saw more than a few guys going down the back hall that led to church. Before you got to that meeting room there were others, ones set up like cheap hotel rooms, ones that anyone could crash in if they had too much to drink to ride on. Of course, in most cases, they were used for more than crashing.

  When Reveca was waiting on Gwinn to come out of those first few days of her transition she had studied those cards that she found with GranDee, did her best to map out the meaning but there were too many variables.

  Her sister had also ignored her each time she reached out. She’d only called Jamison twice, but he had not called back thus far.

  Which gave Reveca no choice but to make an appearance.

  Strolling up to Jamison’s front door, walking in and saying “hi” to the family was a bold move, one that would not win her many favors down the road. But going to his woman’s house, that was different.

  Thelma Ray lived next door to Jamison’s woman, Emery. Reveca’s plan was to make her way there and have a chat with the grieving sister. She hoped to not only get a few answers but send a bold message to Jamison that it would be best for him to answer her. If not, she might accidently knock on the wrong door next time…

  Once she reached the street that Thelma Ray lived on in the lower Quarter, she stopped at the top of it and stared forward.

  There was a bike out front. One she knew. Cashton had told her over and over that he didn’t mingle with her family on his jaunts into the living world, and now the lie was in Reveca’s face.

  She backed her bike between two other cars, hiding her from plain view as she plotted her next move.

  Coincidence—she didn’t believe in those. Cashton’s bike was parked across the street from where Thelma Ray’s home was, from Emery’s home, but still, it was close enough to call a spade a spade. The chances of Cashton being inside any of the other historical homes that were not more than a few feet apart were near nil.

  Jamison no doubt had a part in Saige’s reasoning to get Cashton out. The connection of them knowing each other wasn’t hard to make, so it made no sense why Cashton would tell her a lie that was so blatant. One that Reveca would surely eventually unearth.

  A moment later, the front door to Emery’s opened. Two girls and a guy who was not Cashton came out.

  The guy and the girl with the short, dark hair had to be a couple. Their hands were entangled, and of course the way they looked at each other gave it away.

  The other girl, she was beautiful. Her hair was long, almost reaching her small waist. One long streak of blonde was on the right side of her dark hair. Her eyes; Reveca knew those eyes, they were nothing less than a reflection of Jamison’s.

  The last time Reveca had seen Jamison’s daughter, Raven, she was no more than ten, a hyper, happy kid that trailed after her father as he walked the streets of the Quarter. It was clear she was a woman now. Still innocent though, that smile, that glint in her eyes, those were signs that she had never seen the hell Reveca had, signs that Jamison had kept his daughter nice and safe, sealed in some all-American life.

  Reveca waited for Cashton to make his way out, waited for the visual proof that not only had Cashton been around Jamison, but also that he was seeing Raven. The very idea of that had Reveca’s head spinning.

  He never came out though. Raven and her friends walked to the sidewalk, then across the street. Raven was laughing so hard at something someone said that she didn’t see the bike until it was just before her. When she did see it her smile fell. She looked up and down the street blindly. Even reached out and touched it. Reveca couldn’t read her eyes—that hesitation mixed with want laced with innocence. There was no way for her figure out if her theories were on point or not.

  Finally, the other girl pulled Raven along with her and the boy, they moved a few paces down the street and got into a Jeep, then pulled away with music blaring, all dancing in their seats.

  Reveca sat there awhile longer staring, waiting. Then all at once she heard the rumble of a bike and looked up. Coming in the opposite direction of the street she was on was none other than Cashton.

  Reveca did a double take to the one she had been watching, then to him.

  Cashton grinned as he came to stop in the middle of the street next to her bike.

  “You stalking me?” he asked with a wink.

  “I am,” she replied with a smile because apparently she was. “This is the second time I’ve found you in the Quarter. That should narrow down what girl you’re after.”

  A shy smile came to him, then he shook his head. “All I’m doing today is giving Blackwater hell.”

  “Do what?”

  “He started tailing me as soon as I left the Boneyard. I’ve led him all over the place, all over hell and back. Then I came here, been moving in and out these side streets. It’s totally pissing him off. He wants me to think he’s backed off, but look.” Cashton pointed into his mirror.

  When Reveca looked straight ahead she saw Blackwater’s unmarked car come to a halt at a cross street three blocks up.

  “You gotta go back to the Veil at midnight. You got a coffee date today? Saying goodbye until next month?”

  “Not really,” Cashton said, vaguely staring down Blackwater in his mirror. “I try to say goodbye a good day before I have to go, just in case, you know.”

  He meant just in case he started to fade to the mortal eye. When he first came out, that happened a few times, but since then Reveca had reinforced the spells around him.

&nb
sp; “Turn around, pass Blackwater by, lead him back to the Boneyard.”

  “What are you up to?” Cashton asked.

  “Just stopping by to see an old friend,” she said with an easy grin.

  Cashton nodded once and did as she said.

  The second Blackwater choose to follow Cashton, Reveca got off her bike, then started to walk down the long street she’d been staring down.

  Someone had put up a mirage of Cashton’s bike outside of Emery’s home. She was determined to figure out who and why.

  She had only made it a few steps before she felt an energy barrier. This little trick was something Jamison was good at, something he made a point to do if he was having a top-secret meeting.

  Moving past that barrier wasn’t a challenge for Reveca, not even close. That wasn’t the issue. The issue was what she felt the second she passed it.

  Zale.

  Reveca felt her gut clench, her past racing forward all at once. This was ridiculous and she knew it.

  Even though Zale was seen as the leader of the Rogue’s, and the Rogue’s were what the Sons fought on the regular, him being seen was a rare phenomenon.

  In most cases he resided overseas, jaunted through the villages and towns where myths about the supernatural were born. His theory was if they believe, if they witnessed supernatural beings in action, that would become a catalyst for the rest of the world to believe and understand. The energy there was rich with time, a perfect breeding ground, a breeding ground he used to toy with life and death.

  The farther he was away from Reveca the better in her mindset. He was a mistake in more ways than one.

  The very idea that he was on the same side of the planet as Reveca was near overwhelming. She didn’t need to deal with him on top of everything else she was battling in both the personal and business sides of her life.

  Chapter Three

  Reveca’s walk was slow and calculated. Her first instinct was to march right up to that house, walk in and have a seat like she owned the place. Her doubting that she really wanted to come face to face with both Zale and Jamison at once, of course, halted that instinct. Ignorance was a bliss that was rarely offered to Reveca. She just wasn’t sure she wanted to know what was going on in there.

  There was no fear that Jamison was conspiring with the enemy. In all truth, it was Jamison that broke her away from Zale long ago. He came to her and told her how outlandish her actions had been, how dangerous they were. At that point Reveca had brought back more dead than she could name.

  Jamison was the one that told her it was out of control and Zale was using her. It wasn’t long after that that Reveca figured out she had been spelled to lust. It was a nasty little spell that only worked if you indeed had an attraction to whomever gave it to you. All it did was enhance what was there and when it did, you lost your inhibitions. It was like being drunk on seduction, riding that edge constantly.

  It wasn’t all sex with her and Zale, though. It was way more magic, toying with power, dancing across forbidden edges. As soon as she broke the chain of the spell he had her under, she paid him back. She spelled Zale to be genuine. A much harder spell simply because people rarely are genuine. They tend to lie to themselves more than anyone else.

  She played her part as a lust-crazed woman drunk on power and asked Zale of his plots and plans, and he told her. He told her of the next evolution he wanted to create, how they had already laid the foundation and had nowhere to go but up. Those revelations led to their current stance in which he was the enemy.

  In all truth, if Kenson’s armies had not been called by Reveca’s father to her village so long ago, there would have been a good chance that she would have been coupled with Zale. He wasn’t much older than her, and his family, like Reveca’s, bore generation after generation of natural born witches. Back then though, he didn’t turn Reveca’s head. He teased her too much about how she’d rather be inside of nature instead of controlling it.

  When the fine line between the dead and the living began to unravel, when Reveca’s Edge was overrun with souls that could not move forward, when the darkest and the vilest of souls found a way to linger with the living and suck nearly every ounce of balance out of the world Reveca lived in, the coven had had to make decisions, and quickly.

  Jamison had constructed the spell, one that made a passage to the world that he said was large enough to hide and balance the power they had. The glitch: only natural born witches could push through.

  Only twenty-two were able to leave. Twenty-two natural born witches made their way to the world Reveca was in now.

  All but four of them were still in the coven. Reveca was the first to break away. Truthfully she never wanted to leave the other world, was good with watching damnation rain down. It fit her mood at the time.

  The second to leave the coven was Windsome. She let go of immortality, conspired with Reveca to deliver her into the hands of death. Windsome wanted to find her family, all those the coven had lost to death in the past. She wanted to know if they were trapped or had been able to move on.

  Rumor has it, Windsome now leads a coven within that Veil. The witches in reality reach out to that force, and the ones there reach out to reality, all expanding power.

  The other two that left were Zale and his twin sister, Evanthe. Twins, that was normality among natural born witches. It was even said that was a sign of balance. For one child was dark and one was light. There was no doubt who earned the dark name badge in Reveca’s family.

  For the longest time it was hard to tell who was the darker between Zale and Evanthe. They were too much like Reveca for her to tell the difference. Evanthe was—is—one of Reveca’s dearest friends.

  Even though Reveca and Zale had been at war for some time, Reveca and Evanthe didn’t let that come between them.

  Reveca wasn’t the only one Jamison had come after so long ago. He was trying to reach Evanthe, too. He told her that she needed to be with her family, that they needed her, otherwise the world they had found a safe haven in would meet the same demise as the home they’d abandoned.

  Evanthe lived in New Orleans, but not with the coven. For the most part she stayed out of sight, kept to herself. But every once in awhile she’d come forward, serve as a safe haven between the wars and conflicts between Reveca and Zale, between them and the coven.

  She did that in various ways but her most known way, the reason Reveca kept her close, was by reining in lost Rogue’s, finding them before Reveca did, before the streets did, and helping them find their way back to their own.

  Shade was one of those. Evanthe had told Reveca that she found him seconds after he came back from the dead. Begged Reveca to give him a chance, told her he was a victim. She did, clearly. And never regretted it. Shade, even though he had not been around long, always seemed as if he were meant to be with the Sons.

  As Reveca crept around the side of the house, she couldn’t hear a thing. That wasn’t shocking as no doubt Jamison and Zale had something in place to conceal their words.

  Just as she decided it was better to know what the hell was going on and march up the back steps she heard. “Now you know if you want a glass of ice tea it’s gonna taste better over here. Emery has some aversion to sugar. Surely thought the lack of it would calm those girls down.” Thelma Ray laughed as she snapped the green bean in her hand so it fell into the bowl before her. “Sugar ain’t their problem, it’s youth. Come on over now,” Thelma Ray said as she stood from her seat and went inside her back door.

  Reveca looked to the back door she was about to charge into then to where Thelma Ray went. She told herself she had to find at least one answer to the problems she had before she added more to the pile, and surely one step into that house Jamison was in was going to unveil more that she’d have to contend with.

  She hesitated on Thelma Ray’s back porch wondering if she was coming back out. When she heard her humming inside she opened the door.

  Two glasses of ice tea were already on the rou
nd table in the kitchen area, and Thelma Ray was carefully slicing banana bread and putting it on a serving tray.

  She was a large woman—large and beautiful. Beautiful because she was comfortable in her own skin, settled in her own mind, felt free to say what she wanted when she wanted.

  Thelma Ray was in the Dominarum Coven, just as generations of her family had been, but she was not a natural born witch. She wasn’t a dime store one, either. She heard the power, knew it was all around and if she needed it, she’d whisper to it, ask it kindly to come her way. Her sister, GranDee, was much the same, only she was more daring, wasn’t afraid of the dark energy that lurks in every power.

  Thelma Ray was dressed in an all black dress, clearly still in mourning. The sight of her hurt Reveca, made her focus on the reality that she had yet to let herself grieve over GranDee.

  “Sit down, child,” Thelma Ray said as she turned with her serving platter and put it on the table.

  “How are you?” Reveca asked when she finally did sit down, just as Thelma Ray put a warm piece of bread in front of her.

  “Hot. You?”

  Reveca smirked. “I’m sorry, Thelma Ray. I didn’t get there fast enough.”

  “Nothing to be sorry for,” she said sipping her tea and looking into blank space.

  “Plenty to be sorry for,” Reveca said quietly. “Holden was under my roof, killed her for no reason.”

  Thelma Ray met her gaze. “Everyone has a reason to kill, now don’t they?”

  Reveca heard GranDee in that statement, her not thinking the actions the Sons took to handle their business was bad, but necessary.

  “His made no sense. Killing a family because some informant made him think they were some cook of ours, framing the Sons just to get out of whatever role he had agreed to with the lawmen.”

  Thelma Ray shook her head. “Newberry was a stark raving lunatic. He was no informant for any lawmen.”

  “You sound like Jamison.”